Relics & Games

It’s OK to have heroes. Just a short post to say, like the left hand of a Saint supposedly preserved in a cathedral, for crowds to shuffle by very slowly, and in awe, some things are not yet turned to dust.

the closest thing we have to recorded dreams. That’s why when a black bird flew over my head one evening, and simultaneously I heard a child’s cry, and someone in one of those tall buildings nearby, from a glowing window, pressed “Play” on two incongruous tapedecks – I thought of Zelda .

When Zelda spotted a tower in the distance that could never be reached, when Zelda had a vision of a dark future before it happened, when Zelda played “The Song of Storms” and changed the weather, when Zelda taught a new melody to the spirit child in the forest… thank you.

It’s also the 10th Anniversary of Grim Fandango, everyone. There are games we bring to a close, and games we will never complete, and I wish I spent more time in this mexican beatnik film noir afterlife, it’s firearms that shoot funeral flowers, its simulated poetry dives, its magazine-cutout-montage-people, its Art Deco, glorious-yet-disconcerting temples of seedy, cartoon delight. It’s plight of the common man transported to a totally uncommon and impolite setting.

At the end of the dayall the pieces go in the same box, and the loose ends take on semi-mythical properties, and I shall not be surprised if my afterlife takes on something of the colour of this… “game”.

We can’t be pixel-perfect. We can expect to lose just as much as we win, but we can learn to enjoy losing, call it exploration. If I’ve neglected to mention the best day of your life, or your favourite of the chunky grey cartridges in my attic, that wasn’t the point. A speck of dust is like a boulder to a microchip.

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5 thoughts on “Relics & Games”

I wanted to push play on those games a lot. I never heard of the Grim Fandango, it looks fantastical. And your connecticon prose ties it all together magically, as does the repeated musical theme. A masterpiece in a new medium.

Just my little attempt at reassesing a misunderstood medium, but mostly to get some memory-work done, as is my wont these days. I am more a cinema person, but I struggle to understand why there is such a percieved distance between these mediums and the respect they recieve. The question “Are Videogames Art?” is boring and irrevelant, we already know the answer, which is “Yes”. The real question is “Are they good art?” to which the answer must be “In many cases, no” but to reject the possibility is just ignorance – ignorance of the unique ways this medium constructs its material and communicates emotion, which is absolutely akin to the material of dreams…

number 1 this made me want to play slightly magic again and so i downloaded it :) and number two – the talk of enjoying losing goes beyond this medium and number three in reference to the above yes of course they are art

oh dear, I’m sorry to hear that, Heat. I’m still learning, of course. Glad you stopped by and liked the site anyway. There’s not much to understand here, just me getting nostalgic about videogaming in the clinton years hehe :)Thanks all the same.